Site Mobile Navigation

Microsoft Under Fire Over Lawyers’ Actions

MOSCOW — Even as Microsoft comes under criticism for taking part in software piracy cases against advocacy groups and opposition newspapers in Russia, it is also facing separate accusations that some private lawyers representing the company are involved in corruption schemes.

An international anticorruption group, Transparency International, and a major Russian human rights groups, Memorial, contend that some private lawyers retained by Microsoft in Russia were helping corrupt law-enforcement officials to extort money from the targets of piracy inquiries.

Transparency International and Memorial said they had received reports of dozens of cases, from business owners throughout Russia who said they had been victims. In these schemes, the two groups say, corrupt officials seize computers, claim that they have found pirated Microsoft software and, in alliance with lawyers for Microsoft, demand bribes.

Asked by The New York Times about the accusations, Microsoft said it believed that people who had no legal authority to represent Microsoft were fraudulently using the company’s name to extort money.

It said that to combat such practices, it would for the first time publish a list on its Russian Web site of its lawyers around the country.

The company said the lawyers that it retained “are accountable to us, and if their actions do not comport with professional ethics, anticorruption laws, or Microsoft policies, we terminate our relationship with them.”